BlueGray and Silver
by callalili
Summary: On lightsabers, and the importance thereof. LSFexile/Atton if you really squint, mostly just LSFexile/lightsaber.


Short ficlet for KotOR 2, inspired by the dialogue where Atton asks you about your lightsaber. I always thought the options the game gave you were a bit limited.

* * *

"_So, what happened?"_

"_To what?"_

* * *

It comes as a surprise when she discovers how nosy Atton Rand can be. He did, after all, live on Nar Shadda for quite some time, and one does not live for very long on the Smuggler's Moon if one cannot keep one's nose out of other people's business. The street gangs and the crime lords do not take kindly to questions, even the innocent ones a child might ask, and Atton Rand is neither innocent nor a child.

Still, it makes her uncomfortable to lie to him, and so she turns away and peruses the star maps and pretends not to hear. But Atton surprises her again; he is persistent, too, and in irritation she wonders how he ever made it this far without the Exchange putting a blaster shot through his head. "I don't remember what color it was," she finally snaps at him, and Atton backs off, watching her curiously. "I don't remember, and it doesn't matter."

And to some extent this is true. She has, after all, done her best to forget.

But that night her dreams are strange, and filled with dancing swirls of color; silver, like the streams in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and blue-gray, like the color of Atton's eyes.

* * *

Atris has her lightsaber. But it is not really hers anymore; it belongs to Atris now, who took it and fiddled with it and changed all the crystals around until there is nothing, really, that the Exile can claim is hers. So she looks at it and sighs a little, but when the Ebon Hawk flies for Dantooine she does not mourn.

In the crystal caverns of Dantooine she kills kinraths and exchanges barbs with Master Vrook, and finds that she prefers the vermin who are at least honest in their hatred of her. She walks amongst the glowing growths of crystal. Atton, still watching, still curious, comes to stand by her as she carefully wraps a few chosen shards into a handkerchief.

"I thought you only needed one," he says.

"Just in case," she tells him.

* * *

The Ebon Hawk has attracted quite a motley, rag-tag crew as of late. There is the scoundrel and the bounty hunter, the assassin droid and the technician, innocent Disciple and embittered Kreia. It is Bao-Dur who suggests she remake her lightsaber. She does not, of course, object. But there is something unsettling about the weight of the hilt in her hand, and she does not even activate it before putting it down with a shake of her head.

They whisper behind her back of Force sensitivities and unhealed wounds. But it is nothing so dire as that; the blade just feels—unbalanced. She goes back to her vibroblades. They do not sing when she swings them, but at least they swing correctly.

Atton surprises her again. He is waiting for her in her quarters one evening on Dxun and she jumps a little when she sees him; she had not expected that he could be so quiet.

"You had two," Atton says abruptly. "Two lightsabers. That's why just one feels unbalanced."

She looks at him, this man that Kreia calls a fool and an imbecile, sitting there on her bunk with his messy dark hair and his eyes the color of her lightsaber crystal. "Yes," she says. "I had two."

"Make another one." Atton sounds impatient; that is the scoundrel coming out, the rogue who lives his life dashing from port to port just one step ahead of the authorities. "What's the problem?"

"I had forgotten," she says, and watches as he smiles at her ruefully. Atton understands more than he is letting on, she is sure of it, but she does not ask him and he does not offer.

He gets up to leave. "Better finish it tonight," he tells her. "You've got all of Iziz to save tomorrow."

* * *

She has forgotten what it was like to dance with twin lightsabers in her hands.

Vaklu's men do not stand a chance. Her lightsabers hum pleasantly in her hands, and she is not even fighting, not really, because the universe is singing to her through the delicate crystals and all she has to do is follow the music that is everywhere about her, swirling blue-gray like her scoundrel's eyes and silver like a fountain. She has forgotten what it was like to hear the Force as song.

There is darkness spreading at the edges of the galaxy and there is chaos in the center; planets are dying and the Republic teeters on chaos. But here, in this small corner of the royal palace of Iziz, she is dancing to the pulse of her racing blood and there is something right with the world.

So when the Sith assassins discard their stealth and throw themselves at her, she only smiles and leaps forward to face them, blue-gray and silver blurring in the lazy afternoon light.


End file.
